The Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro destroyed, this Wednesday (11), a memorial made in the Jacarezinho community for the 28 people killed during the deadliest police operation in the history of the capital of Rio de Janeiro, in May 2021.
The tribute to the victims had been inaugurated last Friday (6th) and was promoted by the initiative “Observatory of the Integrated City”, formed by a group of organizations, which produces data on human rights violations in the Jacarezinho favela.
The police claimed that the memorial was “illegal” and made “apology for drug trafficking”. The authorities, through the 25th DP (Engenho Novo) and the Special Resources Coordination (CORE), formally seized the material from the destroyed memorial.
In a statement, the Civil Police stated that the memorial was “a tribute to the 27 drug traffickers killed in confrontation with the Civil Police during an operation in the community”. In the statement, the police also argues that “the 27 dead had passed through the police and were involved in criminal activities, in addition to the fact that the construction of the same had not been authorized by the City of Rio de Janeiro”.
“Another relevant fact that determined the removal of the memorial is that the mention of the civil police officer André Leonardo de Mello Frias, murdered by the criminals, with a plaque on the memorial along with the name of the traffickers, was denied by the murdered policeman’s wife and did not have authorization from the family either. of the agent,” added the police.
Responsible for the memorial, the Observatório da Cidade Integrada explained that the monument was built as part of a program of activities that marked one year of the police operation. “All this was carried out with the aim of showing that violence cannot be the only way for the State to be present in the favelas,” the Observatory said in a statement.
“The Observatory reinforces that everyone is a victim of this state action, including police officers who risk their lives in operations against the so-called “war on drugs” that only focuses on poor and black territories,” he added.
The statement concludes by saying: “We reinforce that all lives matter and that the Memorial was a form of right to memory for families who lost their children, even after the investigation of 24 of the 28 deaths that occurred in Jacarezinho on May 6 was closed. of 2021.”
A year after the operation, four police officers were denounced.
The deadliest police operation in the history of Rio de Janeiro, which left 28 dead in Jacarezinho community completed one year last Friday (6).
Of the 13 inquiries opened by the public ministry to investigate the action, ten were filed and three were reported, two of them against four civil police officers. Two drug dealers are already accused of the death of civil police officer André Frias, with a shot to the head.
The last of the complaints was made to the Justice on May 4, against two civil police officers who allegedly cornered and shot dead Richard Gabriel da Silva Ferreira and Isaac Pinheiro de Oliveira. Agents must also answer for procedural fraud and for forging the crime scene.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, which asks for the removal of both from public functions, at the police station, they falsely reported the collection of two pistols, two magazines and a grenade with the victims.
“The elements indicate that there was no confrontation there, those people were not armed and there was an execution, in our opinion, from what we have learned”, he told the CNN the promoter André Luis Cardoso.
In October of last year, the Justice had already accepted the complaint against two police officers, one of them accused of the death of Omar Pereira da Silva, who was already wounded and dominated when he was murdered. The second security officer is accused of procedural fraud.
According to prosecutor André Luis Cardoso, the three victims were involved in drug trafficking, as were most of the other dead. Among the ten inquiries filed, two concern scenes involving 13 men, where the MP identified signs of confrontation and self-defense by the police.
In addition, Cardoso points to the death of two innocent people. “It is important to say this, even for the families to know about the victim Matheus [Gomes dos Santos] and in the case of the victim Carlos Ivan, they were victims of a side effect because they were not in the confrontation, they were residents of the community, they did not participate in drug trafficking and were caught in the crossfire”, he declared.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office claims that it followed the understandings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Federal Supreme Court when determining independent expert opinions, carried out in São Paulo.
“What is in the reports corroborates the testimony of the police officers. There were no point-blank shots. No gunpowder residue was found on these garments, nor was there any DNA mixture. And there was no fraying of the clothes either. The only fact that drew attention was the case of Omar, Omar’s clothes were torn”, he added.
The prosecutor stated that no evidence was identified that indicated other cases of possible executions, but recalled that the investigation faced difficulties, such as the lack of witnesses and the impossibility of adequate expertise at the scenes. If new evidence appears, investigations can be reopened within a period of up to 20 years.
Operation is seen as failure by MP and Defender
Coordinator of the task force set up by the Public Ministry to investigate the deaths in the operation, Cardoso says he cannot assess the performance of the public security forces in Rio de Janeiro. “I am not a promoter of public policy, my assignment here is criminal,” he said. However, he believes that an operation that ends with 28 people dead cannot be considered a success.
The Public Defender’s Office, which followed the entire investigation and provided support to residents, believes that the task force has made progress.
“We wish there were more steps forward, but we had, for example, a fundamental role in the opening and development of autonomous procedures and we also had important conclusions regarding the victims, which confirmed that they were not traffickers, contradicting and refuting the initial version. of the police that they were all criminal traffickers, even to establish honor and break with the criminalization of the victim when she is black, poor and from the favelas and suburbs”, declared defender Fábio Amado.
The 28 deaths in Jacarezinho drew attention to police lethality in Rio de Janeiro, a subject of judgment in the Federal Supreme Court. In February of this year, the Court ordered the government to present a plan to reduce deaths in operations, delivered in July.
“An operation that results in nearly 30 deaths is a failure. We all want a well-paid, well-trained, equipped police that respect the Constitution and all the rules and decrees that Brazil has signed,” Amado defended.
A report by the Study Group on New Illegalisms of the Fluminense Federal University (Geni/UFF) points out that what happened in Jacarezinho is not an isolated event. According to the researchers, between 2007 and 2021, 17,929 police operations were carried out in favelas in the Metropolitan Region of Rio, with 593 ending in massacres (actions with more than three deaths), with a total of 2,374 deaths, 41% of the total deaths. in police actions in the period.
Jacarezinho is the neighborhood with the highest number of deaths, and, according to the study, seven deaths occur for every ten operations performed there.
THE CNN sought the Civil Police to ask for a position on the operation and the results of the investigations, but is still waiting for a response.
In January of this year, the community of Jacarezinho was the first to receive the new program from the government of Rio de Janeiro, called Cidade Integrada. After an occupation by the security forces, the promise was that the actions would extend to areas such as education, health and culture.
This week, Cidade Integrada completed 100 days in Jacarezinho, with criticism from residents and human rights organizations. Created in the community, lawyer Joel Luiz Costa coordinates the Institute for the Defense of the Black Population, which, together with other institutions, produces a study on the impact of the program.
“Nothing was promised: works, sanitation, drainage work on the Jacaré River, but ostensible policing was what most happened”, he declared. According to Costa, cases of home invasions by security agents have still been reported.
To date, the research in progress by the institutions has interviewed 134 people, 61 of whom stated that they had already had their home or a relative’s home invaded without a court order, 39 claimed to have seen or known about a neighbor’s home being invaded, and 28 reported that had objects stolen or damaged by the police.
“It is necessary to understand that the favela is not a cause, but a consequence of social inequality. It’s not going to be the military confrontation, the caveirão, the aerial caveirão that will be able to fight the retail drug trade, it needs a much more plural policy. A policy that puts the lives of residents of state agents at risk, is it successful?”, asks Joel Luiz Costa.
In relation to the complaints made by residents, the state government reported that it had installed an outpost of the General Corregedoria of the Military Police in the neighborhood’s samba school. The unit received more than 30 reports and opened investigation procedures.
The government of Rio de Janeiro questions the statements and defends the benefits of the program, which involves 40 secretariats and bodies, according to the administration, with regular and professional courses, reforms in public equipment, river cleaning, projects in the area of housing, credit, sports, leisure, social actions and other services.
The State also announced that one of the pillars of the Integrated City is dialogue, with weekly conversations with community leaders, open to all residents and civil society entities.
Source: CNN Brasil
